Since the little mermaid is a fictional character, that looks apart from the tail isn't very important in the plot, the original authors most likely feels indifferent and it's based on a cartoon - I think the casting is okay as long the cast can act and sing good. So the character not looking like the original doesn't need to be an issue. The Disney cartoon even implied it's a diverse area since prince Eric looked Latina/Hispanic, so it's not unlikely Ariel also looks like she comes from a diverse area. If the plot is in the US or Brazil it would be more likely than if it's in Denmark for instance.
If a movie or TV-show is based on a true story with historical people in it, the resemblance would be very important. It would also be very important if the author had decided a character should look a certain way and not given the filmmakers the permission to change it. In some movies and series about Mary of Scots it would be an awful casting decision to have anyone else than a pale ginger to play her since it's a real person, yet in two of the movies and series Latina/Hispanic looking women were cast. While a dark skinned person in the same series was portrayed by a pale blond woman. The Latina-looking and the blonde woman should switch roles for more historical accuracy.
I admits it's weird that people are reacting when a white person plays a person of color, but almost no one react if a dark looking person plays a white person. If Brad Pitt played Barack Obama almost everyone would react negatively, but when a Latina looking woman played Mary of Scots almost no one had a negative reaction - if any reactions at all. The newest Mary of Scots movie fortunately took this accuracy in consideration and cast a pale ginger to play her, but her servants were all black and Asians which is most likely not that accurate. The "blackest" of them would be the Spanish or Italian looking if she had any of those, but no Congolese or Taiwanese.
I know nothing about her, but I assume she's talented to land the role.
But isn't this reverse white-washing?
Yes it's all well and good to have more diversity in characters and shows, but bring that diversity to new shows, new movies and new stories... Stop trying to rehash pre-existing stories and characters as being completely different from the originals in the name of diversity.
People had a stink over Jake Gyllenhaal playing the Prince of Persia, and people have a stink when other white actors play roles of characters who are not white... So if we're supposed to be stopping that sort of crap, which I'm all for... Why is it suddenly OK to cast a white character with an actor of a completely different race... And why would anybody be surprised others would take issue with this?
Payback or something?
The problem with payback mentality is that it doesn't stop the cycle.
I just don't see the point in changing the race or gender of pre-existing characters people have known for decades.
If you want to reboot a movie or story or whatever, then do it right. If you're going to remake a pre-existing story but then change a bunch of stuff around, make this character that was a girl a boy, make this character who was Asian into a white person, and so on... Is it really the same story and characters people knew and grew up on?
Or is it just a crap movie piggy backing off the fame of the original?
If people don't like white actors playing characters who are not supposed to be white, then for equality sake, that should be applied to every race and every gender.
Or better yet... Stop rebooting and remaking movies. The 80s and 90s may not have been the most PC of eras, but there was a constant stream of original cartoons, TV shows, movies and such.
Since the turn of the century, it seems there are fewer and fewer original shows and films... You either get reboots, remakes... Or you end up with an original movie that they recycle into several movies over the next 10 years in half assed sequels.
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Really frustrated actually. So its racist for a white actor to play a black character but its perfectly fine for a black actor to play a white character? Its racist for a predominantly white country to have a period piece with no minority actors even though at that period of time immigration was non existent and they had no "minority" population, but if we have a modern show with almost all black actors then its perfectly okay? This is really racist.
I'm also annoyed because they have no reason to remake the little mermaid in my opinion.
Now that said I have no issue with her (I don't know her so I have no idea if she can act, though if she can then her being cast isn't an issue)) I don't even have a real issue with her being cast as the little mermaid, I have an issue with all the hypocrisy and racism that surrounds the act and I have to wonder if she got the role purely because she is a minority rather then her own ability. The PC culture needs to die and we should start going back to being meritocratic.
@Xlelouch0 What do you mean? Are we talking about forced racial swapping of characters? That would depend on which nation we are speaking of, for instance if the nation is overwhelmingly white, if we have characters who are white being played by black or minority actors then that is an obvious sign of racial preference as they are going out of their way to replace a character which is precisely what we see now. Are you talking historically? If so we could argue several points, the biggest one being its an irrelevant point, what happened before is not what is happening now and wrongs from the past cannot morally be righted by wronging another now simply because they happen to share a physical trait (that's called racism and I doubt you would be endorsing rampant racism). We could argue that the reason why minorities where more scarce historically was because minorities where more scarce in general, or that the industry was overly restricted, or the fact that some democratically run parts of the US where so rabidly racist that they had to give minor roles to blacks simply so they could be edited out for that regions version of the movie. However we would then also have to contend with minority actors of the past like Ramon Novarro who was Hispanic and starred in the original silent version of ben hurr in 1926, other Hispanic stars where in roles in 1911 and so on. So do they not count? Are we assuming that because you don't know of any that they didn't exist?
@Xlelouch0 Are we making an assumption that because they where rarer (which should be expected since they are "minorities" i. e. a group of people who do not make up the majority of the population) that this meant it was because they where discriminated against instead of because they only made up a small fraction of the population? Because if that is the case then that is an erroneous judgment. For instance blacks made up less then 10% of the population in 1920(currently only about 13%), is it reasonable to expect them to be 50% of the cast? 40%? 20%? Of course not. So less representation is expected (Just as it should be today as again, they are only 13% of the population so demanding them being represented in 50% of the media is absolutely absurd and overrepresenting them). That isn't to say that discrimination didn't take place, irish where discriminated against for most the history and they where white, so do they get factored into this? Basically the only argument I can see you trying to make with that question is the assumption of extreme oppression (it wasn't actually, most groups despise each other, prior to the US people of different ethnicities and races and religions did NOT intermingle ever, it was new to every one and every group was bias against every other one (again, I would point to the Irish (or Italians for that matter)), is not accurate. Their was definitely individuals who where racist, that goes for every group not just whites (look at Africa and the middle east and asia, they are far more racist then any white nation bar none), but that doesn't mean their was systemic oppression (again, we had Hispanics in movies and television (Desi Arnez for instance from I love lucy was Cuban)). The only group who can say that was blacks due to democrats creating jim crow laws and such, but even then that was in democrat states and regions and it was not a universal mistreatment (and its rather racist that so many wish to present it as such).
@Xlelouch0 In short if your arguing that its okay to be racist now because you believe (incorrectly) that all people where at one point in time discriminated against by whites (and incorrectly assuming that this didn't go both ways (multiple ways really, native americans had slaves so did Hispanics before it was made illegal by whites)) and as such you can discriminate against them because their skin color matches the minority of people who did wrong a hundred years ago (give or take a couple of decades), then I'm sorry but that is absolutely racist and you are what you proclaim to hate.
Explain the great wall or gods of Egypt or any of the other minority movies that got taken over by White hero saving types. Missing me with that bullshit.
This chick isn't aying meridith she playing a fucking mermaid and you domt care about it being a ginger cause if ariana grande dumbass was the mermaid you would of been fine
@Xlelouch0 The great wall? Your talking about the Matt Damon movie? Well one it wasn't taken over by whites, it was almost entirely an Asian cast, and two it was an Asian production company that was working with an American production company that came up with the script and as this usually works they have requirements of that companies actors working with the others which is precisely what happened. Also he wasn't playing an Asian character, he was literally playing a European character in asia so their is no "white washing" or what have you which is what I was discussing (same goes for the last samurai). I don't know the other one but my guess is it has something to do with a predominantly white nation making a movie and as such they had predominantly white actors and while we can argue whether or not that was the best move or not claiming that its racist is idiotically stupid and would then be an argument for why my remark is perfectly justified as that would mean replacing any character with any other race would be racist thus the examples I gave where in fact openly racist and discriminatory towards whites. I'm sorry but you have no argument here, either its racist and therefore what I stated is valid OR its not racist and if we replace black characters with white ones then its perfectly reasonable and justified. I don't think you thought this through. Just as I think its absurd to have a show where shaft is a white guy or Shaka Khan is a white guy, I think its absurd to have a movie where a white character is replaced with a black one, ESPECIALLY in a nation that is predominantly white because that means they put it extra effort to replace the race of that character vs. just having so few actors of that race (in America for instance 5% of the country is Asian, that is not a large pool of actors to pull from (and we are talking all Asians, indian, Mongolian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese etc.)).
As I mentioned in my answer to that question, I don't have a problem... "Well, considering that mermaids aren't real and so there is no "race" associated with them, any female can play a mermaid. ... For instance, we don't know how many fingers a mermaid would have. So, suppose in the last mermaid film, the actress playing the mermaid had 10 fingers. In the remake, the actress playing the mermaid has 12 fingers. How should we feel? Which actress is closer to the real mermaid? Neither. Because mermaids aren't real. Therefore, both actresses, while different, are equally suitable to playing a mermaid.
That's the case here except that the difference between mermaid actresses is skin color and not finger count.
However, if you want to inject some semblance of plausible fact into a mermaid movie, a black mermaid makes more sense because merpeople would have diverged from the genus Homo (our genus) millions of years ago - back when all humans were still in Africa... and black."
It is not about her character it is about repetition which we see over and over Disney movies have become anti-white male we have seen this with Marvel movies we have seen this with Star Wars
Honestly, she's a good actor and cast. My only thing is, I don't like that they really made the change in the name of diversity because the plot is kind of ass.
I never really liked little mermaid, and I feel like there is very few princesses that were strong and solid characters. Tiana, the first black princess from Princess And The Frog is one of them. I like her better because her plot was solid.
So I'm not exactly excited to see a such a culturally strong woman like Halle play a role of a dumb fish girl chasing after some guy the whole movie. Then giving away her life to be a stay at home Queen. When she could have ruled the sea.
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It's not Halle Berry, it's Hailey.
I think it's going to be very poorly received especially after all the fuss Disney made about being true to the location and culture with Aladdin, now basically doing a complete 180-degree turn with a Danish story that revolves around British and Nordic folk tales.
The only way I could see this NOT being a complete disaster is if it is a modernized take on the story, or takes place in the Caribbean rather than northern Europe. This would again run counter to how the other Disney live action movies have gone so I have a gut feeling this is not the plan.
The real question to ask here is why does Hollywood insist on black washing redheads?
Also worth mentioning that the original Ariel from the story Disney based their animated movie off of was completely green and did not look near-human at all.
It's funny how you argue that it doesn't matter cause ariel is a fictional caracter but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have been fine with tiana being white. I get that black people or generally anyone of another race than white doesn't get enough recognition in the film indistrie. And I'd be happy to see more of them in upcoming movies. But I'd rather have my favourite child hood cartoon caracter look as authentic to the original as it gets. But anyways, it's a movie about mermaids so I'll definetly watch it. And I'm sure she'll do a great job.
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She has an amazing voice. I heard about the big controversy and the whole thing just makes me laugh. I think sheās a good choice. But I understand and empathize with both sides of the argument.
All the bullshit asideāa live action little mermaid sounds just as awful as Aladdin.
Coming from a black chick, even I am not at ease with this. Simply because itās a distortion of my childhood and most importantly, the story itself. A distortion that is apparently creating division ( like we needed anymore of it)
I was a huge little mermaid fan. As a kid you donāt know all the racial perspective, you just know that āok, we donāt have the same skin color, but weāre both girlsā. And thatās all that mattered: it was an innocent story for kids to enjoy.
When I saw the news I literally closed my eyes and squeezed my forehead. I do agree with a previous post: this is going to only cause division. I donāt know why they canāt just keep true to the story and stop changing so much shit. If they want to create agendas, fine. But donāt use childhood movies to do that.
My point here: Keep it real or just leave it alone.
Third option: fked up. This is absolutely ridiculous to cast a black person to play a white skinned character, which has become more and more common (e. g. Annie, Hamilton, etc.) I'm not going to watch it, and hope the movie gets cancelled due to controversy, which I think was the point of the move in the first place. They just wanted to piss people off, then shame the public for not being more color blind, when black people are the most blatantly racist people out there.
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Anonymous
(25-29)
+1 y
I dont care, i was nevee really that into the little mermaid, i dont know why people are angry, unless its a biopic the colour of her skin doesn't matter, people would be angry if the races were reversed because its about representation. We don't have that many minorities leading roles in films, especially ones aimed at children, it is important for children to learn all races have equal value as human beings and if you constantly showing a white person to be the hero, it can cause a inferiority complex in minority children and the opposite for white children. Coming from a white person so i am not biased in my opinion
Ariel wasnāt black and therefore they shouldnāt get a black or ethnic actress to play her. If disney wants more black or ethnic princesses, then make them. Donāt just make white characters black for the sake of being politically correct. @BabyBirdy thoughts? lol
She's very pretty but she's not fit for the role of Ariel when it comes to the first original live action of the character because she's completely different looking then the caricature also the story is set in Denmark one of the most whitest country's in the world and her father is Triton king of the sea who we all know is a Greek God.
I think it's not historically accurate at all. The little mermaid is part of Danish folklore i believe, if they want to show case diversity they need to pick a "fairy tale" from other cultures like they did with Moana
How comes that people always start rageing, when a white actor plays the role of a black character, yet it is totally fine when a black actor plays the role of a white character?
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Personally I think it's a great idea. Let civic nationalists enjoy the fruits of their ideology FFS. It also better keeps with the sea monster myth of the mermaid. Look at old movies like Leviathan that use the genetic plasticity of sea life gone awry as central to their plot. It definitely keeps with that theme as well. So ya, you can't beat this 10 / 10
I loved Ariel as a kid and honestly, even though I think they should have stick to the little mermaid we all know, white skin with red hair, I also don't really care about live actions lol cartoons shouldn't be turned into live action cause it literally always ruin them. So, I honestly don't really care about it since I won't watch it 🤷🏽
She's gorgeous! when i saw her name i was like... that's not Halley Berry? lol They're names are almost identical but yeah I don't mind it. I didn't know anything about this but this is exciting, I will definitely go see the live action movie when it's out to give my opinions.
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Anonymous
(36-45)
+1 y
Even non-whites think this is ridiculous. If you want coloured Disney characters so bad, then make up your own. No need to change established beloved characters. Touching them and expecting us to not be mad (non-whites included) is racist and uncalled for.
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